Outdoor Photograph of Seven Workers on a River in Winter

From this item, LOI has digitized a textual record.

This image consists of seven people dressed in winter coats, hats, and pants holding shovels and ranged along a bank of the Thompson River. The seven people in the photograph are: Sasaguchi, Hashizume, Shimozawa, Tohana, Akamoto, Kawata, and Harafuji. All of the workers, except for Akamoto are facing the camera. Each of the seven people are holding shovels, but Sasaguchi and Hashizume are standing on planks of wood near a wheelbarrow which is on a number of wood beams propped up over the mud of the river bank. Snow covers the ground, except for where they have been digging. The names of the individuals shown are written on the back of the photograph along with 1943, 3- and Japanese characters.

Fumiko Kawata was born in 1938 in Cumberland BC to parents Itoko and Yoshitoshi Kawata. Yoshitoshi's parents were Sowa & Kinshiro Kawata from Ehime prefecture. Kinshiro came to Canada as a farm labourer on the Empress of Russia Dec 19, 1922, his nearest relative at that time was Tomi Kawata of Yanazaki Mura, Nishiwa gori, Ehime Ken, Japan. Itoko and Yoshitoshi were born in Japan and remained Japanese Nationals.

The digital copies of the records were acquired by the Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective between 2014 and 2018.

This record was digitized in full.